Staff Backend Engineer, Performance Enablement

Details

GitLab is hiring a Staff Backend Engineer for its Performance Enablement group. The role focuses on defining and building a self-serve platform that enables GitLab engineering teams to run performance tests, analyze results, track trends, and meet performance requirements throughout the development lifecycle. This is a hands-on technical leadership role involving collaboration with the Engineering Manager to shape a multi-quarter vision and roadmap and influence teams across research and development.

Performance Enablement projects include reusable component-level testing, load testing, performance analysis, trend visibility, artificial intelligence-assisted engineering skills, and enabling performance testing from local development and continuous integration workflows through pre-release validation.

Responsibilities

• Define the team's technical vision and multi-quarter roadmap with the Engineering Manager.
• Identify opportunities for impact across research and development and advocate for technical priorities with stakeholders.
• Design and build reusable platform capabilities for performance testing, analysis, reporting, and trend visibility.
• Solve complex technical problems and ship large capabilities with minimal guidance.
• Turn lessons from early team engagements into reusable capabilities, documentation, and onboarding.
• Build adoption of the platform so teams can manage their performance independently.
• Coordinate with peer teams across Developer Experience, Infrastructure Platforms, and product groups.
• Lead AI-first development practices, including AI skills and agent-assisted performance workflows.
• Mentor engineers in performance engineering, platform design, and technical decision-making.
• Serve as a performance expert for other teams and provide technical guidance on initiatives spanning multiple groups.
• Participate in on-call or operational support where required by the team's ownership model.

Requirements

• Staff-level backend or platform engineering experience, including setting technical direction across a team and surrounding teams.
• Track record of building and operating performance testing and analysis systems, with an understanding of performance bottlenecks and how to identify them.
• Experience leading or anchoring a performance enablement or platform function and achieving measurable adoption of internal tooling.
• Experience defining and delivering a multi-quarter technical strategy or roadmap with engineering leadership.
• AI-first development mindset demonstrated across the software lifecycle, including shaping how a team uses AI.
• Hands-on experience with load and performance testing tools such as k6 or equivalent.
• Experience with Kubernetes and cloud infrastructure such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, or similar.
• Clear written and asynchronous communication skills, including the ability to explain performance trade-offs to engineers and leadership.

Team

Performance Enablement is part of Platform Enablement within Developer Experience and Infrastructure Platforms. The team works asynchronously and collaborates broadly across research and development, coordinating with peer platform and product groups. Documentation, onboarding, and feedback loops help turn early team engagements into capabilities that scale beyond individual teams.

Salary

• Poland base salary range: zł 328,000–zł 492,000 per year.
• The base salary range does not include bonuses, equity, or benefits.

Benefits

• Benefits supporting health, finances, and well-being.
• Flexible paid time off.
• Team Member Resource Groups.
• Equity compensation and Employee Stock Purchase Plan.
• Growth and Development Fund.
• Parental leave.

All GitLab roles are remote, although some roles may carry specific location-based eligibility requirements.